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how I branded my Pinterest page and why you should too

This post contains affiliate links which means I make a small commission if you buy the product/service I’ve linked to. Thank you for supporting TTBH. Morning friends! If you follow me on Pinterest you’ll notice that I’ve recently branded my profile. Since focusing on building my Pinterest following (which is still on the very small side) and branding each of my posts with at least 2 pinable images, Pinterest has skyrocketed to my biggest traffic referrer here on TTBH. Part of my decision to focus on Pinterest was sheer curiosity. Tons of other bloggers swear that Pinterest helped triple or even quadruple their blog traffic so I decided to give it a shot and see what happens. Well, they were right. When I realized that Pinterest did in fact drive heaps of traffic to the blog I got to googling to find out how Pinterest really works. You see, I…

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Don’t niche yourself into a corner 

Morning folks! I hope you’re all having a great week so far. The weather in these parts has been pretty crummy but the forecast is calling for a good amount of sun coming up so things are due to improve which is great! Nothing sucks more than being stuck inside with a toddler who has suddenly realized that doors lead to amazing outside places. Needless to say, Margsy is super grumpy and just itching to get outside and play. I’ll often catch her standing at the front window pointing outdoors and saying “go, go, go”. Here’s hoping that sun starts peeking out really really soon. So enough about my endless complaining about the weather. Today I actually want to talk to ya’ll about blog niches. In the last few weeks I’ve gotten a couple of emails from readers asking about blog niches and how I chose mine and if I…

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Recipe Calendar – Meal Planner App & 50$ paypal gift card giveaway

This post is sponsored by Harmonic Soft. All opinions are my own. Thank you for kindly supporting TTBH. One of the disadvantages of living a frugal lifestyle is falling into food ruts. Frugal living in our house comes with a  sense of living on autopilot and once we figured out a general meal plan that appeals to us and stays on budget we stick to it week after week. Although our meals are generally healthy and balanced they do tend to be redundant because we’ve automated the process of grocery shopping to stay on budget and feed our family 3 meals per day for at most 100$ per week. So, when Harmonic Soft the creators of the Recipe Calendar – Meal Planner reached out about working with their product I jumped on the opportunity because this awesome app allows you to peruse new recipes, add your own and generate a…

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balancing evergreen vs real-time content

When I was first introduced to blogs roughly 15 years ago they really acted as an online journal of sorts. Back then (yes, I’m really that old) the blog world was dominated by hand coded layouts, archives and the word blog really wasn’t even used to describe the trend. With time, these hand coded websites a la angelfire or geocities were replaced by revolutionary (at the time) content automation sites like diaryland that stored, updated and kept your entries organized and easy to access. Shortly after, content management systems like greymatter, blogger, moveabletype and finally wordpress made their way on the scene which completely revolutionized how and why websites and more specifically blogs were created and managed. Blogs come in all shapes and sizes don’t they? There are niches for just about everything from parenting to crafting and just about anything and everything you can imagine in between. What’s especially…

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How a workflow can make you a better blogger

Blogging is such a learning process isn’t it? If you’re anything like me you’ve experimented a ton, looked to other bloggers for advice and done research on top of research to find out what’s in that secret sauce that allows some of these big time bloggers to consistently churn out awesome content, be ever present on social media and otherwise rock at blogging. Well folks, the secret sauce is a workflow. Basically, every successful blogger has a workflow that they stick to which makes them efficient, consistent and constantly on top of their game. The blog world can be a fast paced and often demanding environment and some days I was left wondering how the heck they did it! Anyone else? My workflow was created through trial and error. At around the six month mark I realized that I really really loved blogging but didn’t always have the time required…

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20 must have wordpress plugins

WordPress plugins are my focus for today folks! But first, I have a confession. I’ve become obsessed with WordPress plugins. Why you might ask? Well, they are super fun, super efficient and on some subconscious level I totally geek out on this stuff. Mer sometimes tells me that I probably should have pursued a career in technology because I’m so intrigued by how this stuff works. I’ve realized pretty quickly that one of the enormous perks of having a self hosted site is having the power to install as many WordPress  plugins as I want. Not long after setting everything up here at thistinybluehouse.com I got to work researching and trying to find some plugins that would help streamline my blogging process. Up next week is a post about my blogging workflow, so, stay tuned for that. In the meantime, I want to take some time and have a look…

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How to disconnect in an overconnected world

Let’s talk about disconnecting today okay? Raise your hand if you’ve never got your smart phone far from reach. Raise it even higher if you check in (social media, wordpress, facebook) at least a half dozen times of day. I’m guilty of both of these and since starting this blog I find I’m even more over-connected than I was before. Pre-blog I’d check in to read a couple of my favorite blogs from time to time but I didn’t spend nearly as much time “connected” to the interwebz. Ironically, the inspiration from this post came from my mother. She was heading out one day and I asked her to give me a shout when she arrived at her destination and she looked at me square in the eyes and said “what for?”. I couldn’t believe it – it’s natural to me to check in with friends and family throughout the…

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